University of California San Francisco

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Professional Development and Training

We equip correctional leaders and staff with additional knowledge, skills, and professional identity to actualize living and working environments that are more safe, healthy, and humane.

What We Offer

STRATEGIC SUPPORT

  • Staff

    We assess staff experiences, identify training gaps, and create learning programs that drive change and strengthen team morale.

  • Leadership

    We support leaders instituting change initiatives to communicate their vision, review and revise procedures, and establish professional norms that reinforce staff training and promote health and well-being.

IN-PERSON TRAINING

  • Tools and Application

    We deliver practical trainings and workshops that strengthen leadership, staff wellness, safety, and rehabilitative practices.

  • Safer Units, Better Outcomes

    Our training empowers staff to create safer units and achieve better rehabilitative outcomes through proactive engagement — even with the most high-risk, high-needs people in custody. 

Available Trainings

Staff learn foundational concepts proven to improve health and safety in prisons. We address the occupational health crisis in US prisons through international best practices like dynamic security, normalization, and progression.

Staff who work with the most complex populations gain foundational knowledge in human behavior, mental health, substance use, and related topics alongside advanced skills in communication, de-escalation, and motivation. Resource Team/Activation Team  training prepares staff to work with anyone — without relying on counterproductive practices like long-term isolation.

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Staff who work with high risk, high needs people incarcerated in women’s prisons are equipped with foundational Resource Team/Activation Team training, through a gender- and trauma-informed lens.

Staff gain skills and strategies to help support people to make positive changes. This training emphasizes coaching, mentoring, and role modeling as essential additions to officers’ foundational safety and security work.

We prepare unit and facility leaders to launch, drive and sustain change initiatives and to build learning-oriented institutions. Leaders learn practices to sustain strong teams, model and set professional norms, and communicate with impact.

We enable training academies to provide effective, consistent trainings that support the DOC’s mission. With a grounding in adult learning theory and effective  instructional strategies, trainers can better prepare a professional workforce for a challenging work environment.

Staff learn to recognize how mental health challenges shape behavior, treating them as context for understanding, not justification, while maintaining clear expectations for personal accountability.

We offer training for correctional officers to understand the role of peer mentors in prison-based hospice units and to improve their interactions with incarcerated people who are experiencing life-limiting illness.